More couples are starting out in marriage with financial debt – student loans, mortgages and credit debt. The last thing they need is wedding debt. 

Talking with engaged and recently married couples, one problem comes up again and again: the wedding budget. It’s also one of the most searched topics related to marriage right now. 

The Knot, a popular wedding planning site, surveyed over 600 engaged couples planning a 2026 wedding and found roughly 80% expected the current economic climate to affect their plans. Couples reported trimming guest lists, swapping out flowers and décor, and price-shopping among suppliers. 

For couples funding their own wedding, the trade-offs can run deeper: delaying a home purchase, revising plans for a family, postponing or avoiding the wedding altogether. 

Two key factors amplify the problem: the expectations set by personal dreams and social norms, and an industry that inflates the price of every service the moment the word “wedding” is mentioned. 

Social Media Tax 

We spoke recently with a young woman who, at 26, was attending her first-ever wedding. She had witnessed dozens through social media, but all of them seemed like an impossibility. Her expectations were being set before she was even engaged. 

According to wedding site Zola, the average spend on flowers alone is now around USD $6,300 (AUD $8,700), roughly 17% of the total budget. Add photography, videography, a content creator, gown, tux hire, hair, and makeup, and that figure climbs to around 34% before a single guest has been fed. 

They call it the social media tax. Every moment is captured and shared – a lovely way of including those who couldn’t attend and immortalising the event, but it comes with a cost.  

In 2026, most of the expense lies in the ‘party’ and its projection into social media. The essential element – the ceremony at the heart of a wedding – is generally not a challenge to the budget. 

Yet it is this ceremony that carries a deep spiritual significance and is the reason why weddings deserve lavish celebrations. 

Lifting our Thoughts to Heaven 

From the very beginning, God created man and woman for each other; to be one flesh and to be fruitful. Marriage is God’s idea. 

The Bible tells this story through the creation accounts of Genesis which record the primordial ‘wedding’ of the first human beings. Through the prophets, God reminds his people that the marriage covenant mirrors his covenant with us. 

The nuptial themes are carried through the Gospel parables, culminating in the Book of Revelation – which features, of all things, a wedding feast to which we are all invited as honoured guests. 

For the same reason that we decorate our churches and beautify our places of worship to give God glory, weddings also should be lavish and abundant. In celebrating with bride and groom, we honour God’s gift of human love and are reminded of our destiny to join the heavenly banquet.  

Yet when couples are delaying or avoiding marriage because they can’t afford to celebrate it, something has gone terribly wrong. 

Weddings in the 21st Century 

Weddings are family celebrations. We feel increasingly sad about the way trends have moved the event out of the realm of family and communal provision and into choreographed, professionalised affairs where families become an afterthought.  

Having been parents of two brides and one groom, we know the unexpected delight weddings bring – the fruits of decades negotiating toddler tantrums and navigating school suspensions. Our hearts brim with joy as bride and groom promise to love and respect each other for life.  

That delight comes from seeing our children accept the responsibilities of adulthood and commit to forming a family, not from the menu or venue. 

Yet the wedding industry is incentivised to deliver the opposite, making the modern wedding less accessible, especially those with limited budgets. For the sake of future generations, it’s time to challenge this cultural trend and reclaim weddings for the community, and – dare we say it – funded by the community.

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Republished with thanks to SmartLoving. Image courtesy of Pexels.